1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of decomposing composing an organic chemical such as a phenol contained in water.
2. Description of the Related Art
It has been reported in recent years that certain organic chemicals, e.g., p-tertiary butyl phenol, bisphenol A, etc. act as endocrine-disrupting chemicals. These endocrine disrupters are known as being related to serious human and animal health problems and as having special undesirable effects on the environment.
There have heretofore been available various processes of decomposing or removing organic chemicals contained in water. These processes include an adsorption process using activated carbon or the like, an ultrafiltration process, and a distillation process. Another process which has recently attracted attention in the art employs a photocatalyst of titanium oxide.
The adsorption process is disadvantageous in that it can remove only a limited range of organic chemicals. The ultrafiltration process fails to separate low-molecular-weight compounds from water because they pass together with water through the ultrafiltration membrane, though the process is capable of removing high-molecular-weight compounds from water. The distillation process is effective to remove organic substances from water to a certain extent because it relies upon different boiling points thereof. However, the distillation process cannot remove those organic substances completely from water, and requires a great amount of energy as it heats water that contains organic substances. Although the recent process which employs the titanium oxide photocatalyst is able to decompose almost all organic substances with the strong oxidizing power of the photocatalyst, the process fails to process a large quantity of organic substances because it requires irradiation with ultraviolet light.
Consequently, it has been desired in the art to develop a process of easily decomposing organic substances such as endocrine disrupters.